Survey results from the 2024 Emerson Youth Risk Behavior Survey (YRBS) were released earlier this fall and shared with the School Committee at their December 5 business meeting.
The presentation was made by Heather Stouch, Acton-Boxborough’s Coordinator of Social Emotional Learning and Mental and Behavioral Health, and relates to the District goal of improving social-emotional and mental and behavioral health outcomes for students. As outlined in the goal, the A-B District aims to achieve this through initiatives that shift environments and resources to help students better access learning and cultivate construction relationships.
The YRBS is administered every two years to students in grades 6 and 8-12 who respond to questions on a wide range of mental and behavioral health issues facing today’s youth. Eighty-one percent (7,885) students from ten local, public, school districts participated in the 2024 Emerson survey this past March. Twenty-eight percent of the cohort were Acton-Boxborough students. Participation is voluntary and anonymous.
Survey data indicate Acton-Boxborough students increasingly feel able to handle stressful situations, feel safe and supported at school, and have one or more trusted adults in the school setting whom they can talk to and are likely to seek out if they have a problem.
Students reporting symptoms of depression appear to be trending down across all grade levels, falling six percentage points from 2022 (21%) to 2024 (15%). Declines were also noted for self-harm, suicidal thoughts, and use of alcohol, marijuana and e-cigarettes.
Stouch told the School Committee there are pockets of demographics that appear to be disproportionately vulnerable to depression, bullying, harassment, and self-harm. These include LGBTQ+ students and students who identify as a race or ethnicity other than White or Asian American.
Rates of students driving under the influence of alcohol or marijuana also declined as well as driving while using a cellphone and sending or receiving sexually explicit messages or photos. High school students reported the highest levels of stress due to academic workload. The top three coping strategies of high school students included exercise, social media use, and watching television.
Students in grade 8 self-reported that their access and use of social media is too high.
An area of concern for the Acton-Boxborough School District is student reports of being bullied, which increased from 10 percent in 2018 to 17 percent in 2024 for students in grade 6 and has increased slightly for students in grade 8. Stouch reported that bullying prevention instructional units have been integrated into the District’s new social-emotional learning program for grades 6-8 and will be an add-on to instruction in kindergarten through grade 5. “The goal is to help students identify and recognize when bullying is occurring, how to report it when it does occur, and how to stand up to it when they are the recipients or see someone else being bullied,” Stouch said. “The biggest outlier was sixth grade bullying, so we’ll be looking to see what impact the new bullying prevention program has in the next data cycle.”
The District plans to introduce a screening tool in kindergarten through grade six to help schools identify students at risk for developing social-emotional problems before they emerge, and to monitor progress and evaluate outcomes at the individual, classroom and program levels. “This is a way for us to use data-based decision-making for social emotional learning and mental and behavioral health at the elementary level. We are doing a lot of professional learning right now on using data to inform instruction and to identify trends so schools can productively address issues specific to their school community.”
A comprehensive review of the Acton-Boxborough School District’s social-emotional and mental and behavioral health programs and services can be viewed here.
The 2024 YRBS aggregate report for all ten school districts can be accessed on the Emerson Hospital website.
Diane Baum is the School Committee beat reporter for the Acton Exchange. She served on the Acton-Boxborough Regional School Committee from 2015 to 2021.